Charts displaying stock market activity or detailed stock analysis are common on investment or brokerage websites — an embedded music player would seem out of place.
But not on thrasher.com, where with a click of the play button, users can listen to the mellow jazzy riffs of Tin Men Music and navigate through the more mundane investment information that populates the rest of the site.
It's just one small way in which Thrasher Capital Management LLC of New York, with just $100,000 in assets under management, de-ploys technology to cater to its youthful prospects, many of whom may be less than savvy financially.
"Our use of technology, like the ThrasherTV videos you find on YouTube and MySpace, is more about educating, communicating and generally being in tune with the younger demographic we are attempting to reach," said Khalid Jones, chief operating officer, referring to two popular networking websites.
He is also the chief compliance officer and general counsel, as well as an on-air personality for ThrasherTV.
If you visit the firm's MySpace page, be warned that there are few pictures of traditional-looking investors: Thrasher is about eclectic, hip young people. So it is no surprise that among its 248 MySpace friends are scantily clad women and two guys who caught large tuna.
Also on the MySpace page are links to three videos. While they epitomize the amateurish quality of online videos, they do a good job of describing fundamental concepts of investing.
For instance, in the video "What Is a Stock?" Mr. Jones is on the streets of Manhattan illustrating the differences between public and private companies by pointing to privately held Kmart Corp. of Troy, Mich., and publicly held Barnes & Noble Inc. of New York.
On the firm's YouTube page are 16 ThrasherTV video segments. Investors can subscribe to syndication feeds to be notified when new videos become available.
Mr. Jones and James Perkins, chief executive, were leery about sharing too much of their future technology plans.
"We have a lot in the pipe," Mr. Jones said. "One thing I'm comfortable mentioning, for instance, is that we'll be rolling out some screencasts in January."
The screencast is an increasingly popular means of demonstrating software and online services using audio/video files stored on a website and shared with viewers over the Internet. The files are recorded using a webcam, headset and microphone.
For more information, visit thrasherfunds.com, myspace.com/ thrasherfunds, and youtube.com/ thrasherTV.
Davis Janowski can be reached at [email protected].
